Marines killed in iraq

President Barack Obama called the six U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan on Monday "outstanding" and "brave" as he thanked American service members on Friday during a Christmas Day visit to Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kanoehe Bay. "Even though we have been able to reduce the number of folks we're deploying to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, there are still folks over there every single day and it's still dangerous as we saw this past week with the outstanding, brave men and women who were killed," Obama said. The six American troops were killed when a suicide bomber on a motor bike struck their patrol near Bagram air base, marking the deadliest attack on U.S. forces this year. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The Christmas Day remarks were the first time Obama had addressed the attack. He did not mention it when he made an appearance for reporters while playing golf the day of the attack. Obama and his wife Michelle made their annual visit to the U.S. Marine base's … [Read more...] about Obama says six U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan attack were ‘outstanding’

A decorated former U.S. Marine sergeant opened fire on police in Baton Rouge on Sunday, killing three officers, nearly two weeks after the fatal police shooting of a black man there sparked nationwide protests, including one shattered by the massacre of five Dallas policemen.
An East Baton Rouge Sheriff vehicle is seen with bullet holes in its windows near the scene where police officers were shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. July 17, 2016.
The suspect, dressed in black and armed with a rifle, was himself shot to death minutes later in a gunfight with police who converged on the scene of a confrontation that Mayor Kip Holden said began as an "ambush-style" attack on officers.
Two Baton Rouge Police Department officers and one sheriff's deputy were killed, and one sheriff's deputy was critically wounded. Another police officer and one other deputy … [Read more...] about Ex-U.S. Marine kills three policemen in racially tense Baton Rouge

The killing of a Navy SEAL by Islamic State fighters highlights the increasing risks US troops face in Iraq and Syria as they inch ever closer toward the jihadists' frontlines. IS fighters on Tuesday used suicide bombers and firepower to blast their way past Kurdish peshmerga forces that US troops were supporting north of Mosul in northern Iraq. The fallen SEAL had been visiting a peshmerga encampment near Tal Asquf about three miles (five kilometers) from the front. Officials simply said he was killed by "direct fire." Arizona Governor Doug Ducey identified the SEAL as Charlie Keating IV, who attended high school in Phoenix. It is only the third time a US serviceman has been killed in combat since the United States launched an international coalition to fight the IS group in August 2014. Another 14 have been wounded. Since the start of the campaign, the US military and its coalition partners have launched more than 12,000 air strikes against the self-proclaimed Islamic State group, … [Read more...] about SEAL death shows growing risks US troops face in Iraq, Syria

Islamic State fighters killed a U.S. serviceman in northern Iraq on Tuesday when they overran Kurdish defenses in the biggest attack in the area in recent months, officials said. The dead man was the third American to be killed in direct combat since a U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign against the jihadist group in 2014. "It is a combat death, of course, and a very sad loss," U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters during a trip to Germany. A senior official of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga force said the man was killed near Tel Asqof, a town 28 km (17 miles) north of Mosul, which the militants occupied at dawn on Tuesday. Early information suggested he had been killed by a sniper, Jabbar Yawar said. The leader of a Christian militia deployed alongside peshmerga in the Tel Asqof area said the town had been attacked by multiple suicide bombers, some driving vehicles laden with explosives. A U.S. military official said the U.S.-led coalition helped the peshmerga repel the … [Read more...] about Islamic State kills U.S. serviceman in Iraq

The United States is considering sending a small number of special operations forces to Syria and attack helicopters to Iraq as it weighs options to build momentum in the battle against Islamic State, U.S. officials said on Tuesday. President Barack Obama, deeply averse to over-committing American troops to unpopular wars in the Middle East, could view some of the options as more viable than others as he approaches the final stretch of his presidency. Still, Obama's administration is under pressure to ramp up America's effort, particularly after the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to Islamic State in May and the failure of a U.S. military program to train and arm thousands of Syrian rebels. Two U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations, said any deployments would be narrowly tailored, seeking to advance specific, limited military objectives in both Iraq and Syria. That option includes temporarily deploying some U.S. special … [Read more...] about U.S. weighs special forces in Syria, helicopters in Iraq